The Pelosi Process Is Not The Plaza Plan

Earlier this week a caller to 1280 KIT’s The Morning News asked how I was any different than Nancy Pelosi in terms of trying to -- in his words -- ram the plaza down his throat as Pelosi and the Democrats rammed Obamacare down America’s throat. I was insulted, angered, and mostly frustrated that someone could be so far off on his comparison.

The caller was mad because he didn’t get to vote no on the plaza and I can only assume he felt like congressional Republicans who were left out of the national process.

So for him and all others who might feel the same way, let’s take a quick side-by-side comparison of the processes.
First, Congress was elected by the people to do the work and the voting. Americans don’t give Congress “ADVISORY VOTES” on issues.
The Yakima City Council was also elected by the people to do the work and to do the voting. Yakamanians have never given the council advisory votes on issues.
The Democrats promised transparency -- they said they would hold hearings on CSPAN, the Republicans would be included and the American people would have several days to read the bill on line before any action was taken. NONE of that happened,

The city’s Plaza process WAS transparent. A downtown consultant was hired, their findings were made available on line, there were surveys and a dozen public meetings. Hundreds of people were involved and were allowed to give their input which WAS USED to formulate the final plan.
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KSFO radio host Brian Sussman offers this reminder of the end around deal that passed Obama care.
---Obamacare was signed into law in March 2010. If you recall, Nancy Pelosi’s Democratic majority in the House of Representatives was unable to pass their version of a healthcare law. Because all revenue bills have to originate in the House, the Senate found a bill that met those qualifications: HR3590, a military housing bill. They essentially stripped the bill of its original language and turned it into the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), aka Obamacare.
The Senate at that time had 60 Democrats, just enough to pass Obamacare. However after the bill passed the Senate, Democrat Senator Ted Kennedy died. In his place, Massachusetts elected Republican Scott Brown. That meant that if the House made any changes to the bill the Senate wouldn’t have the necessary number of votes to pass the amended bill (because they knew no Republicans would vote for Obamacare). So Senate Leader Harry Reid cut a deal with Pelosi: the House would pass the Senate bill without any changes if the Senate agreed to pass a separate bill by the House that made changes to the Senate version of Obamacare. This second bill was called the Reconciliation Act of 2010. So the House passed PPACA, the Senate bill, as well as their Reconciliation Act. At this point PPACA was ready for the President to sign, but the Senate still needed to pass the Reconciliation Act from the House.
Confused?
We all were.
And it got worse.
Remember that the Senate only had 59 votes to pass the Reconciliation Act since Republican Scott Brown replaced Democrat Ted Kennedy. Therefore in order to pass the Act Senate Democrats decided to change the rules. They declared that they could use the “Reconciliation Rule (this is a different “reconciliation” than the House bill). This rule was only supposed to be used for budget item approvals so that such items could be passed with only 51 votes in the Senate, not the usual 60. Reconciliation was never intended to be used for legislation of the magnitude of Obamacare. But that didn’t stop them.
So both of the “Acts” were able to pass both houses of Congress and sent to President Obama for his signature without a single Republican vote in favor of the legislation. The American system of governance was shafted. To quote Democrat Rep. Alcee Hastings of the House Rules Committee during the bill process: “We’re making up the rules as we go along.”---
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SO to pass Obamacare Democrats “changed the rules.” The City Council’s initial decision to hold a vote would have been a change of rules in that it had never been done before….but… those in favor of the plaza believed that they idea was so successful with those who attended the meetings and followed the process that the council was willing to go for a vote.

BUT then it was learned that the consultants generally didn’t recommend a public vote because the negative and uninformed would always outnumber the informed supporters. It was their experience that the majority of the public would be won over over time as the benefits of the project came to life. At the same time the consultants recommended a body of local supporters were to spearhead a public education campaign—but that didn’t happen. People who signed up for the citizen advisory group failed to go on the trips to plaza cities and collect the success stories to share with the rest of the community. Why? I don’t know but it didn’t happen so without a local pro plaza group leading an informational campaign, an uniformed vote seemed unfair to the balance of the process. Bill Lover pushed for it since he was against the plaza from the start. The conversation about a vote was always looked at by council as a way to kill the project before all the information was gathered and shared or the public money secured.

In addition there was a concern about setting a precedent with an advisory vote. Would the council actually take the heat and do the job it was elected to do or would it now start a pattern of kicking every complex or controversial item to a time consuming and expensive and non-binding public vote? No.

There are those who felt they would have a chance to vote no and then felt that opportunity was “taken” from them when the council got back on course. In truth, if we were a little more in tune with the consultant recommendations and aware of prospect of setting precedent a bit earlier in the process, the council would NEVER have agreed to a vote in the first place…..and shouldn’t have. We made a mistake, we took Lover’s bait without doing what we needed to do and that has been a perception problem ever since.
Pelosi said Obamacare wasn’t a tax but it was. We were told we could keep our doctors and out current plans but we can’t. The process was lie after lie and Jonathon Gruber admitted to it.
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Charles Krauthammer writes -- An October 2013 video shows MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber, a principal architect of Obamacare, admitting that, in order to get it passed, the law was made deliberately obscure and deceptive. It constitutes the ultimate vindication of the charge that Obamacare was sold on a pack of lies. “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” said Gruber. “Basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass.” This was no open-mic gaffe. It was a clear, indeed enthusiastic, admission to an academic conference of the mendacity underlying Obamacare.
First, Gruber said, the bill’s authors manipulated the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which issues gold-standard cost estimates of any legislative proposal: “This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes.” Why? Because “if CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies.” And yet, the president himself openly insisted that the individual mandate — what you must pay the government if you fail to buy health insurance — was not a tax.
Worse was the pretense that Obamacare wouldn’t cost anyone anything. On the contrary, it’s a win-win, insisted President Obama, promising that the “typical family” would save $2,500 on premiums every year. Remember: The whole premise of Obamacare was that it would help the needy, but if you were not in need, if you liked what you had, you would be left alone. Which is why Obama kept repeating — PolitiFact counted 31 times — that “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan.”
But of course you couldn’t, as millions discovered when they were kicked off their plans last year. Millions more were further shocked when they discovered major hikes in their premiums and deductibles. It was their wealth that was being redistributed.
As NBC News and others reported last year, the administration knew this all along. But White House political hands overrode those wary about the president’s phony promise. In fact, Obama knew the falsity of his claim as far back as February 2010, when, at a meeting with congressional leaders, he agreed that millions would lose their plans.
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The Plaza process was presented by Crandall/Arambula—a national leading firm in downtown revitalization with many many successful plazas to their credit. Some of us got out and spoke to businesspeople in communities that built a plaza and who had seen their towns transformed. There was nothing hidden, nothing lied about, nothing deceptive about the process so to be compared to the Queen of Deception, Nancy –you have to read it to see what’s in it-Pelosi, was the ultimate insult!

Now even more private money is coming on to the table and more is said to be in the wings. That news, along with a reminder that the city’s 7 million is already accounted for, should be cause for excitement. We have a million-seven invested already but we have a new council. Will a group that doesn’t have the full detail and background make a decision to walk away from that investment? It is possible. They will be telling some of Yakima’s most generous businesses and individuals that they don’t share their vision for what Yakima can be.
The plaza will provide activities, a gathering place, a business driver, a recruiting incentive, a family fun space, a tourist destination, a center to the heart of the city with unique design, sophistication and commercial application. It will be programmed to function like so many other successful community plazas around the country.
Obamacare versus the Plaza. The thought that reasonable people might see a comparison is as amazing as it is typical Yakima. We have an opportunity to overcome the slow slide to decline that we have experienced over the past 20 years.
If you think the money could be better used somewhere else, that’s fair. Not everyone will agree with every plan or priority but get the facts about the impact a plaza can have, make sure you know what the city can and can’t do with the funding if it isn’t used for a plaza and try to understand that Obama care was based on lie from the beginning as a way to create more governmental influence…the plaza is a unique public/private open process based on the recommendation of successful downtown revitalizers meant to be used for the good of all. Nancy Pelosi? Sorry caller, n

ot even close.